1976 Pontiac Bonneville - Looking Up at Everything

Nostalgia trips are different for everyone and what sends one person on one might take someone else nowhere. This 1976 Pontiac Bonneville takes me on one right back to when I was ten or eleven years old growing up in that most unusual and massive enclave known as Long Island, New York.  

My childhood friend Tommy's parents, who I thought were loaded, well, I thought everyone was "rich" when I was growing up except my family, had a Bonneville just like this but it was in a light blue. And I thought it was fabulous. They had an even "plusher" Buick Electra of the same vintage as well. His mom drove the Electra meanwhile his dad roughed it in the Bonneville. My father's rental grade Ford station wagon was a Conestoga wagon in comparison. 

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Both sucked up every square inch of that circular driveway his dad had installed around 1975 so they could maneuver their gigantic cars easier; I remember that concrete being fresh and new. They lived on a main thorough fare that although was only two lanes wide, was quite busy. My father, who was not a "car guy", wasn't so much impressed with them having two late model cars as much as he wanted their circular driveway. I, naturally, was all about those mid-seventies land yachts. 

Thank you, Google maps, for backing up my memory. Save for the cracks in the driveway, Tommy's house looks exactly as I remember it. 

This Bonneville kept popping on my Facebook wall this week and being drawn to flashy, sparkly things, I finally clicked on it to see what it was all about. And it didn't disappoint. In more ways than one. 

It's for sale by a dealership called the LaFontaine Auto Group up in Milford, Michigan, west of Detroit about a third of the way to Lansing. I don't know who or what these people are, or what they're smoking, but they've got this thing listed with an asking price of, hold onto your bell bottoms, $43,000.

 

With a NADA "high retail" list of $5,400, it's about the largest "spread" (difference between asking price and book value) I think I've ever seen. I can't imagine getting insurance for a car so overpriced. I mean, you can, but your All State's and Haggarty's will only insure a car for its book value. A tree falls on this sucker and you could be out the dark side of forty-grand. 

This isn't the only ridiculously overpriced car they've got for sale. They also have a super low mileage 2009 Cadillac XLR-V for $95,000, an 11,000 mile '79 Beetle convertible for $39,995, an '83 Oldsmobile Toronado with just 3,000 miles on it for $22,000 and on and on. But this Bonneville takes the cake. Seriously, guys? Apparently so. 

Historically, this car is somewhat interesting. Being a 1976, it's the last year for the run of GM's infamously awesome 1971 full-size cars that would become, thanks to federally mandated, five mile per hour safety bumpers starting up front in 1973 and the rear in 1974, the largest automobiles GM ever made. Starting in 1977, GM's great downsizing epoch began with their reducing the size of their full sizers, on average, by more than a foot of length and dropping some eight to twelve hundred pounds of curb weight. Meanwhile increasing genuinely usable cabin and trunk space. Impressive. Save for the overall designs of the new "smaller" cars, which I found, subjectively far less interesting than the brutes they replaced, they were still pretty big.  

I was heartbroken over the new "small" big cars but what did I know. I wasn't of driving age for another five to six years. Once I did get to driving, I quickly realized just how impossible these things were to handle. No wonder Tommy's dad put that circular driveway in. 

Also, for 1976, Pontiac returned the "Bonneville" nameplate to the top of the Pontiac full-size pecking order when they dropped the silly "Grand Ville" moniker. From 1971-1975, the Pontiac Grand Ville, which means "big house", was the top-of-the-line Pontiac with the Bonneville slotted in under it but ahead of the Catalina. "Bonneville" had been Pontiac's range topper from 1959-1970. 

This being a last-of-its-kind and the first-year return of the "Bonneville" moniker, along with this being in such extra-ordinary original and unrestored condition, enough to make this really worth forty-three-thousand-dollars? And I wonder why lottery winners blow their winnings so quickly and easily. 

Tommy's parents were big gamblers, and they took regular trips to "Vegas". Back then, airlines discounted fare big time for high rollers traveling from JFK or LaGuardia. Tommy said he was sick and tired of going because when his parents were gambling, he'd be stuck in their hotel room with a sitter with nothing to do but watch TV. Sounded like "the life" to me. I got invited a time or two, but my mother kyboshed it. I've always thought she didn't want me to see how the "other half" lived. 

On some level I miss those days when I found myself "looking up" at everything. As superficial as perhaps a family of moderate means living in a modest house having two brand new luxury cars and taking fly-a-way trips quite often was. Or still is. They used to go on vacation in wintertime too! Wow! 

That's one of the strangest things about Long Island - the affluence mixed with the have-nots. I grew up one or two steps away from being literally hand-to-mouth meanwhile folks in my neighborhood were choking nightly on filet mignon. Through my foggy goggles now I see Tommy's parents, who, don't get me wrong, seemed like very nice people, and they were also great to me, for what they most probably were.  

They eventually moved out to "Vegas" to be closer to the action all the time. They took their Electra and Bonneville with them.